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Serving up Wood

Serving up Wood

I thought TFL'ers might be interested in reading this post by Miriam Reimer concerning the wood pulp that is served up every day by the food producer factories in America and the World. The list of 15 food companies that serve you "Wood" surprised me. I especially liked the quote about how pleased one industry spokesman was at being able to add 15% cellulose to a loaf of bread. Wood pulp is not digestible and has no nutritional value to humans. The list of products containing this stretcher is shocking.

I'm not sure it is disgusting. We take fiber supplements to help clean the digestive system and salads for the same purpose. Cellulose is just more of the same. It seems a little creepy to know that it is added to syrup and ice cream.

Whole wheat flowers, vegetables, fruits have enough fibers + all the vitamins, minerals and micro-elements that comes with them (and human body can process).Does wood provide you with all that. I don't think so. ;)

I'm a little uncomfortable with the "obvious assumption" that no-nutritive-value ==> bad-for-you. As far as I know my Metamucil doesn't have any nutritive value either. (And a "fiber" ingredient is important to many gluten-free flour replacements.) I'd prefer to eat real foods that integrated fiber, but getting fiber by itself instead doesn't seem like the worst thing to me...

I'm in agreement Chuck. Although I'm uncomfortable with the idea that the FDA has no limit on how much you can consume in a product. Really? The food scientists are too clever to have that kind of freedom.

I think a little wood pulp-derived cellulose is less alarming than a lot of the other ingredients found in that list of products. Maybe that's not saying much. Yikes! Makes me realize how spoiled (and lucky) I am to have a fresh loaf of bread and a garden full of veggies. Note to self: don’t ever take that for granted!

Marcus. My wife bought some hamburger buns for a cookout and we didn't use them. They sat for about a month in a corner and looked as good as the day she bought them. If the mold and bacteria avoid 'em, perhaps we should too.

Cellulose is the structural component of the primary cell wall of green plants, many forms of algae and the oomycetes. Some species of bacteria secrete it to form biofilms. Cellulose is the most common organic compound on Earth. About 33% of all plant matter is cellulose (the cellulose content of cotton is 90% and that of wood is 40–50%).[4][5]

Wood pulp consists of two polymers, primarily cellulose, the material used for making white paper, and 2–6% colored lignin. Bleaching seeks to remove the lignin from the cellulose. Worldwide, the P&P industry is currently using chlorine dioxide as its principal bleaching agent. Chlorine dioxide oxidatively breaks lignin away from the solid cellulose in two forms, little fragments and big fragments. The fast majority of lignin solubilized by bleaching is in the form of little fragments. These are than digested by bacteria and other organisms in artificial oxidation lakes before the effluent is ejected to a natural water body such as a river, lake or ocean. However, the big lignin fragments where the color resides are too large to be digested by the microorganisms. The color is recalcitrant and ends up staining natural waterways and changing the flux of light absorbed by aquatic ecosystems.

not so much that wood cellulose is being used as an ingredient as that there is no ceiling for the allowable quantity added to foods. That opens the door for all sorts of abuses by manufacturers. It is exactly the kind of thing that the FDA was created to prevent. Similar non-food additions to foods by unscrupulous producers led to the Reinheitsgebot in Germany to regulate the purity of beer and French laws that decree what is allowable in a baguette.

Cellulose, as a substance, is inescapable in foods containing fruits or vegetables. Although non-nutritive, cellulose is something that our bodies are equipped to deal with and is actually good for our health. In appropriate quantities. From appropriate sources. Without having been heavily processed, or altered from its original state.

I read the article while munching on a sandwich made with whole-wheat bread which contains a fair quantity of cellulose (wheat-sourced, not tree-sourced). Since I made it, I know what is in it. If something is presented as "food", then it should be real food, not ground-up tree. If someone wants to sell strawberry-flavored ground-up tree, more power to them. Just be honest and label it as such instead of calling it strawberry yogurt.

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